(None of the politics or science of this story will match with reality perfectly or at all sometimes. I will try my best not to lose any’s suspension of disbelief. If you notice any problems, please let me know so I may try to fix them in the future.)

“I had a bad dream.” I spoke. “Oh, buddy. Do you want to tell us?” Asked my dad in a concerned tone. I just shake my head as the hug breaks up. “No, it just made me want to hug you both.” I then turn around and hug him as well while the emotions swirl inside me. All the mistakes I made that I looked back on with regret could be fixed. “I’m going to go back upstairs.” I said as I went back upstairs.

I was back in 2007. Way before anything went to shit. While I was mainly a software engineer, I knew that the hardware right now sucked compared to fifty years from now. I looked at the apple on the side of the bed. It absolutely sucked. I mean Apple was big in the 50s, but its tech was questionable and by it refusing to work with the government it had lost its competitiveness with its rivals. I would switch to an android when they bring out a reasonable one but for now this would have to do. Apples were fine for general consumers but when it comes to a tech geek, they were a bit underwhelming.

I focused for a minute and tried to remember the passcode. After about fifteen minutes and seven failed attempts later I finally unlocked it. I browsed around for a bit and got onto the internet. I got onto Tumblr and created an account. I named it Time-Traveller. I then began to browse the platform. It would soar in popularity and eventually be sold for a billion and then waste away in a corner of the internet thanks to miss management. After that however it kept getting updates that focused on optimization every now and again. During covid and the great divide it would once again soar in popularity. It develops a fascinating community which is what most social media sites should have been instead of the money magnets they became.

I then realised bitcoin would come out soon as well. This all really seemed like perfect timing to me. I then headed downstairs and decided to get on the computer in the study. Dad said I could use it as long as I didn’t download anything without his permission, and it had to be checked by him first for viruses.

The computer sat on the desk, and it booted up and I facepalmed when I saw it was windows vista. It fucking sucked to code. Even in the future we couldn’t entirely tell how many different programs it was written in. Mostly in C, I think. A bit C++ and wasn’t some .NET in there as well. I explored some forums for a bit before finding one which was made up of mainly professional programmers. They were mainly complaining about tiny technical problems and social problems at work.

I joined and began to type a query once I was approved with in the space of five minutes. Whoever runs this forum must be some geek in a basement I thought to myself. Before now I had mainly been interested in anime and comics. But, I had long since read anything that would come out for a long time. Now s time to help save the world.

Once typed I pressed enter and it read, ‘Does anyone know how to get a program to be able to be run on multiple cores. I try dividing it up, but the system will only send data to whichever one requests it first.’

The entire group either began to mock me for my insane request or tried to help me. At this point in time for the next ten years it would be a major problem which held home computers back. It was one of the many things I knew a simple fix for.

I received thousand-word long essays from these guys explaining how it’s impossible to do with current hardware. Some tried to figure it out with me as I discussed the topic with them, but most seemed to just joke around.

After about half an hour I put up a second post. ‘I figured it out. While I was reading all of your lovely comments, I figured it out. Thxs.’

There was silence for a few minutes before I began to receive dozens of messages accusing me of lying. I then explained to them the method with which I achieved it and how I got a 23% reduction in power usage when I booted up a power-hungry game like CIV: IV.

I ended up selling the exact coding to a guy called Myostatin. That’s a call name. For three thousand dollars. I got it paid into a PayPal account which was easier to get then I had thought it would be. I was glad that I now would have some starting money. All it required was a name, address and phone number. For now I used mine, but I would change it to a burner as soon as possible.

I then went downstairs and they just gave me a sandwich. PB&J. Yuck. I hate the stuff. But I just ate it anyway, since to them yesterday I loves them. After eating I sighed and walked back to the computer. I then began to type frantically as I wrote out the base code on a blank note. By the five-hour mark I decided that enough was enough for the day. I had written out over four-hundred-thousand characters and my mind was exhausted.

At dinner we talked about how their work was and they asked about my new hobby. I lied and said I had gotten more into how games work from playing them, and then explained how the multiple core program problem had yet to be fixed and how I had accidentally figured out a way to do it.

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I then went to sleep after a bath. Well, I tried to that was. Instead, my head was running thousands of lines of code as I was trying compile a new coding language. It was called Auspex for its ease at being able to build predictive algorithms. It was meant for interfaces between conventional, quantum and bio processors.

It was the basis for basic general VIs but that was a long way off since I lack two of the three processor types. This was an extremely crude version which was made of only a few million lines of code. The later language would be made of billions and was mainly coded by VI.

The term VI meant a non-sapient intelligent algorithm. Which, in English meant that while it could adapt it was imitative from a knowledge base. The distinction between that and an AI was that an AI could use inferential thinking like most humans could.

I drifted off to sleep as layers upon layers of code built themselves into my mind. My mind was different from that of people in this time period. It had been manipulated slightly for increased algorithmic functions. How it worked I had no clue, but basically it turned my mild autism into something that allowed me to be on par with most conventional computers.

…

I woke up the next day and stretched my arms as I got out of bed. I got breakfast as dad drove me to school. Dad mostly stayed at home and worked on his book. He was a god writer but constantly went back and forth retconning his stories and always got to the point where he had to start again. Other than that, he was basically a stay-at-home dad. Mum was a surgeon that worked at the local hospital, well that’s what I thought anyway.

“Have a nice day, bud.” Said my dad he patted me on the shoulder while I got out the SUV. I slung the black backpack over my shoulder as I braced myself for the gruelling experience that was the second year of middle school. I was always the worst since I was born a few days before the cut off. It meant some guys in my class were almost a full year ahead of me. That combined with the fact that some had puberty kicking in and it made the entire atmosphere tense.

Or at least that was what I expected. I then remembered that all of these brat’s problems were kind of stupid. Looking back most of the dilemmas I had in school were all dumb or could have been solved by asking for help. That kind of environment only carried itself into society where you would get a nasty wake up.

There was a buzz of conversation in the air as all the students still had the last bits of summer still inside them and brimmed with this year being a new start for them. I just went to my locker which took a few minutes to figure out. I then inserted the key which I was thankful for since I would have had no clue what to do if it did so. I was glad for the fact that the school tried to save money on the cheaper lock but that was overshadowed but constantly lost keys.

I grabbed the schedule which was given to us and grabbed my Geography and Biology textbooks. Who does biology in the morning. I mean even now there are studies that show that doing math while the brain is still in it turning on faze is the best time to promote growth of problem solving and mental numeracy differentiation.

I just shake my head while continuing to run lines of code and getting rid of what seems to work. I sat through the class while just focusing on the chalk strokes on the board and the sound they made. actually, they helped me get through a few million line of code quicker rattling around in my head quicker than expected.

The rate at which knowledge was being conveyed was gruellingly slow for someone like me and I could notice several kids who were either as bored as I would be without my coding project or a several kids who were bored out of their skulls and would prefer to be outside. The entire education system was a factory meant to produce workers in a world where most would become obsolete in ten years’ time. No wonder by the twenties over half of American kids were on anxiety or ADHD meds.

ADHD wasn’t a mental disorder it was simply the brain being so bored at what it was doing it wanted to be elsewhere. While some had actual disorders like it most just wanted to do what evolution had programmed us to do for millions of years. Run, be outside, solve physical problems with our hands. Thanks to evolution the majority of humanity was programmed to act this way. We were like VIs in that way, I guess.

Even scientific fields had far higher success rates lower depression rates when you introduced more physical problem-solving skills. If I wanted to change the world, I would need to change to from the ground up starting with how each individual mindset was built. The current system gave most the mind that everything was set in stone and that was how it was. You were told to think outside the box and come up with novel solutions yet when you question the box which encloses all of us, instead of having it explained to you, all one receives is rebuke.

That was enough with the philosophy and psychology. I was nowhere near an expert at that stuff only having the same knowledge an average person from the fifties would have. I just continued to revel in the sounds that the teacher made with the chalk as it sent tingles up my spine.

I then notice Suji staring blankly out the window. I remember her as mostly lonely but did socialize. We often sat together since most other tables were taken and it had become a sort of ritual as we bathed in each other’s misery, while occasionally chatting. Why didn’t I keep contact with her…?

‘Oh, fuck.’ I thought to myself as I remembered the time in junior year when she had just disappeared. It had turned out her parents had found out she kind of swung the other way and caught her with another girl. I hadn’t really spoke to her until I saw her file from the U.S. army. ‘Even now my enhanced senses freaked out even though I knew she was pretty much harmless as that glare; she shot me the time we first met in a combat Op. As far as I knew she died somewhere outside of Fusan when the bombs fell.

She had great potential but that wasn’t the main reason I wanted to remain friends. I was going to because she was one of the few persons who would not judge someone immediately and if she did, she would change it if new evidence came to light. She was also just a nice person and her history showed that even after years of abuse in a religious boarding school she came out the other side the same person. Well, kinda. The biology class ended, and we headed out to break.